First State Bank in Oakhaven is a brick building from 1952 with four teller windows and an oak counter that somebody still polishes.

I went in on the twenty-ninth of October at about twenty past three with the passbook wrapped in a kitchen towel, which I want to record because it is ridiculous, and because I unwrapped it on a marble counter in front of a stranger like a man producing a gun.

The nameplate at the fourth window said Beatrice.

She is about forty, and she has been at that branch since 2011, and she has the manner that people who have worked a counter for a long time have, which is that nothing at all is going to surprise her.

I put the book down and she reached for it.